For the fifth installment of horror anthology The Silver Coin, the story reaches back to when the coin’s cruel curse was first minted. In a small New England village, a woman has been accused of witchcraft. Michael Walsh writes, draws and letters (with Gavin Fullerton on art assist and Toni Marie Griffin on color assist) for Image Comics.
Mark Turetsky: Here we are, at the end of what was intended to be a miniseries, now just the beginning of an ongoing series, coming full circle to learn the origin of the Silver Coin (and other circular writing clichés).
Armaan Babu: Circles have been pretty important through this series — the Coin itself, and the eye it awakens. The most important part of circles, though, is the idea that you cannot escape them — and it feels like no matter what, there was no escaping the evil that was awakened here. We now know the origins of the Coin and its curse — and that’s certainly going to shape our views both looking forward and looking back.
Before all that, though, we’re looking right here, at the issue in question. Let’s dive in, to the time of literal witch hunts.
The True Face of Evil
Mark: Let me say at the outset that I’m pretty opposed to setting stories about literal witchcraft in historical Salem, Massachusetts. It takes a true historical event in which innocent women were murdered and implies that the people doing the killing might have been onto something. Now, Salem isn’t mentioned in this story. This is merely set “in a small New England village” (according to the promotional text in Image’s preview and at the back of issue #4), but Salem certainly looms large in the imagination of anyone reading this.
Armaan: Putting aside the issues you brought up, this isn’t the most original of places for a curse to have risen, either. A witch, falsely accused, brings doom across those who damned her with her final breath. It’s a tired trope, but there’s enough variation in this telling that keeps me intrigued. The thing that sticks out the most to me is just how reluctant our protagonist is — the unsubtly named Rebekah Goode. Walsh’s characters have always been powerfully expressive, and the Rebekah we see here seems tired. Pressured by a town that demands she save them, ready to damn her the moment she slips up.
Mark: I like how Walsh juxtaposes Rebekah and the witch hunter Cotton Dudley in the opening pages of the comic. Both facing in opposite directions on the page, the rhythmic “clop, clops” of the horse that will eventually kill Dudley, and the “push, push” of Rebekah delivering a tragically stillborn baby. The split second page, with half devoted to Dudley saying, “What a beautiful evening,” juxtaposed with Rebekah’s “I’m so sorry.” It’s establishing right off the bat these two dual forces that are at play throughout the issue, and possibly throughout the rest of the series.
Armaan: Things are about as good and evil as they can get. The witch hunter is here for one thing and one thing only — to punish. Rebekah, however, does all she can to help the people of her village, even when it makes her uncomfortable to do so. Her responsibilities seem to bring her nothing but pain — but true evil rides in with unmitigated glee. The witch hunter takes a disturbing amount of joy in his work — there’s a moment later that focuses on his face, beaming ear to ear as he begins his so-called holy work, that is incredibly disturbing.
Mark: And yet, the curse on the Coin, which we’ve seen kill so many people (both innocent and not-so-) throughout the series, comes from Rebekah. And, not to excuse Martha’s literally turning Judas on Rebekah, but as a widow, she likely doesn’t have much support and probably lives off the milk and cheese of a chronically sick goat. Getting her 30 pieces of silver might be seen as something of a godsend for her, and she certainly hesitates quite a while and immediately regrets her betrayal.
Armaan: Rebekah undoubtedly did an evil thing — one that’s vastly disproportionate to the crime that was done to her. The curse didn’t just punish those responsible for Rebekah’s death, it grew like a disease, harming both the guilty and the innocent alike, as we’ve seen in the past four issues. That coin is at the heart of it — it carries the weight of Martha’s guilt, it is the tool of a truly evil man, and it is the focus of all of Rebekah’s rage. I don’t know a lot about how magic works, but it seems like the perfect focal point for a curse.
Speaking of focal points, though, what did you think of the art this issue? With Walsh writing, I was expecting this to be a fully Walsh affair, but this issue includes both art and color assists. Both assists seem to fit perfectly with Walsh’s art style, to my eye.
Mark: We should mention that back in May, Walsh was in a car accident and had to bring Fullerton and Griffin aboard to help out, due to his injuries. I’m only familiar with Fullerton from his work on Bog Bodies, the moody Declan Shalvey-written Irish crime/survival thriller. His style seems to merge seamlessly with Walsh’s, and I honestly would never have guessed that this comic was anyone but Walsh’s by looking at it. Still, thinking back to Bog Bodies, there are definitely elements that feel right at home in The Silver Coin.
Armaan: I’ve always enjoyed the roughish art of this series — the lines wriggle in places, they look like they want to crawl off the page. It lends itself well to horror, especially this issue, once the curse takes effect. The thing that always gets my attention, though, is the coloring. Much of this issue is lit by the pale pink-oranges of twilight, one of my favorite times of day for how unreal it makes everything feel. It is the time of witches, it is a time when the air itself is unsettling. Light — goodness itself — feels weak, but there’s just enough of it to see how strong the shadows are becoming.
By the issue’s end, those shadows get strong indeed, the last colors of sunset drain to blue as Martha and Dudley are undone by the curse. It’s a brilliant use of colors in storytelling.
Mark: And once again we’ve got this theme of eyes, with Greta the goat growing extra eyes, Rebekah getting hit in the eye with a shovel, even Dudley gets kicked in the same eye by his horse. In both cases it’s the left, or sinister, eye that gets the trauma. The horror elements in this issue are really amped up to a disturbing degree.
But enough about this issue: How does it recontextualize the rest of the series, now that we know the Coin’s origin?
A Thing Once Cursed…
Armaan: What’s interesting is remembering that our witch hunter’s appeared in the future of 1986, back in issue #3. What interests me is learning that the raven Duncan was Rebekah’s ally, firmly on the opposing side of the witch hunter here. I had assumed they were both on the same side, prolonging the curse, but it looks like something a little more complex is happening here.
Mark: And the shadow people are the shades of all the women Dudley has killed over the years. But we get a new mysterious figure as well: the goat-headed man in the shadows with one glowing eye, who speaks in black word balloons (is it Baphomet? Did Baphomet start inhabiting the body of Rebekah’s diseased goat, Greta?). I’m not sure if the spirits of Rebekah and Dudley are on the same side, working for Baphomet, or if they’re in a struggle to control the coin and the people who pick it up.
Armaan: I’m of two minds about the figure with the black word balloons. While it’s clearly the curse given form, and a certain amount of sentience, the moment you speak of looks less to my eye like a goat-headed man, but more like the curse has taken the shape of Dudley himself, pilgrim’s hat and all. So is it an immortal Dudley we see in 1986, or has the curse just taken on the form of the man who inspired its creation?
Only one thing’s for sure — I’m glad this issue isn’t the finale, as originally planned. Not just because I’m dying for more answers to this strange, haunted mystery, but because I’ve had a blast reading through this series, and the writers we have lined up ahead are all ones whose work I’ve enjoyed. I can’t wait to see what comes next!
Loose Change
- Readers, help us out. Is the figure in the shadows on the lower right panel a goat-headed man, or is he the first manifestation of the figure we see on the left?
- Is it a goat horn, or a branch that just happens to look like a goat horn? Is it a goat ear, or the wide brim of a pilgrim hat? Let us know in the comments!
- Rebekah’s cabin is definitely the cabin we’ve seen in previous issues. It matches stone for stone.
- The goat, Rebekah, Martha, Duncan — whose eye do we see whenever the coin awakens? It could be any one of theirs. This issue’s coloring doesn’t make it clear. It could be all of them.
